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What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

siepr.stanford.edu

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Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#81

Post by gymbeaux »

newsomix9xl wrote: post #73

Employees have no incentive to meaningfully implement AI to increase productivity, and if they do so, they have no reason to share it. If AI means job cuts and not using AI means job cuts but no one really tracks AI impact that means performative adoption of AI is safest, and real gains are to be sandbagged as innate magic hand waving. At my work I'm one of the few who says "I made this with Claude" and the near impo…

Yes, I’ve found my coworkers won’t admit they had AI write their code in any sort of group setting yet they’ve all admitted it in private. The implication seems to be if AI is writing your code you’re lazy/incompetent/bad/not working anywhere near 40 hours/week. I for one would hate for our bosses to figure out we do probably ~16 hours of actual work per week. But we all “get our stuff done” (thanks to AI).

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#82

Post by smrtinsert »

ballsac wrote: post #27
simonw wrote: post #2

A challenge with this kind of study is that coding agents (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex) only started working really well in late November, which for most people meant early January due to the December break. General agents (OpenClaw, Anthropic Copilot, ChatGPT "Work") started working even later than that. This category of software may have a much more meaningful impact on work than the mostly-chat systems we were using…

> A challenge with this kind of study is that coding agents (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex) only started working really well in 2026? 5? 4? 3? Heard this one way too many times.

Claude 4.5 was it (nov 2025?), without a doubt. It went from frequent hallucinations to highly usable with much less garbage output. If you were making demos of AI tools around this time your demo/pitch/product was saved and you probably looked like a genius.

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#83

Post by [deleted] »

fathermarz wrote: post #4

Recently poked around the job market to see what I qualify for in this day and age. Working as a solo builder in my org I would say that I have done enough in the last 18 months to consider myself “with it”. What I found was pretty brutal. Companies asking for 4 years of agentic AI experience… pardon? Then it hit me. Oh they are all making shit up now and have no bar that anyone can hit because they are believing in…

[deleted]

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#85

Post by ben_w »

ballsac wrote: post #27
simonw wrote: post #2

A challenge with this kind of study is that coding agents (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex) only started working really well in late November, which for most people meant early January due to the December break. General agents (OpenClaw, Anthropic Copilot, ChatGPT "Work") started working even later than that. This category of software may have a much more meaningful impact on work than the mostly-chat systems we were using…

> A challenge with this kind of study is that coding agents (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex) only started working really well in 2026? 5? 4? 3? Heard this one way too many times.

I get the point having read much the same from Tesla (and fans) regarding self driving cars that still haven't done half the things that Musk said was just around the corner pending regulators a decade ago and repeatedly since then.

And myself I keep making comparisons between AI and the progress in 90s video games where every minor improvement got called "photo realistic" and then forgotten with the next game engine: https://archive.org/details/nextgen-issue-26

So I'm not gonna say "this is it" when the software quality really matters, and I absolutely won't speak to progress (or lack of it) outside of software.

But I will say "you can look around and easily see small businesses using AI to generate posters, quite a lot of small business software and websites are in the same category: the mistakes are real but increasingly don't matter".

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#86

Post by ben_w »

trashface wrote: post #69
simonw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't think that's how it works. Smart, experienced developers who thought coding agents were junk for most of 2025 and think they're useful now in 2026 are not saying that because they got "worn down over time".

I was getting useful coding work done with GPT 3.5. I think devs saying "the models are finally good enough" this year are just trying to save face from their own previous irrational denials.

Useful, yes, sometimes, but it wasn't fully automated "Here's our JIRA board URL, fix everything that's rated 1-3 story points and in the current sprint".

Now it is.

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#89

Post by GolfPopper »

ballsac wrote: post #27
simonw wrote: post #2

A challenge with this kind of study is that coding agents (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex) only started working really well in late November, which for most people meant early January due to the December break. General agents (OpenClaw, Anthropic Copilot, ChatGPT "Work") started working even later than that. This category of software may have a much more meaningful impact on work than the mostly-chat systems we were using…

> A challenge with this kind of study is that coding agents (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex) only started working really well in 2026? 5? 4? 3? Heard this one way too many times.

Perhaps the LLM companies need to start hiring true Scotsmen?

Re: What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality

#90

Post by qsera »

ben_w wrote: post #85
ballsac wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A challenge with this kind of study is that coding agents (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex) only started working really well in 2026? 5? 4? 3? Heard this one way too many times.

I get the point having read much the same from Tesla (and fans) regarding self driving cars that still haven't done half the things that Musk said was just around the corner pending regulators a decade ago and repeatedly since then. And myself I keep making comparisons between AI and the progress in 90s video games where every minor improvement got called "photo realistic" and then forgotten with the next game engine…

>the mistakes are real but increasingly don't matter...

I think it would start to matter once again. People will get fed up of AI posters and art. I think they already are...and once some threshold is crossed, the business won't dare to use AI generated assets/designs.

Turns out humans are much better at recognizing patterns in stuff that is generated ONLY using patterns from human generated content.

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